Book sales flop for unloved stars

An indifferent public is leaving many big-budget celebrity memoirs on bookshop shelves

Carol Vorderman's autobiography has only sold 4,000 copies (Dwayne Senior)

The former co-host of Countdown, Carol Vorderman, made her name as a whiz at
mathematics, but she will take little pleasure in adding up the sales of her
memoirs, launched in early September.

Her publisher, Headline, will be dividing her £100,000 advance by her 4,000
sales and coming up with disappointment. The public seemed to have turned
against Vorderman after her dispute with Channel 4 over money and a shrill
performce on the BBC’s Question Time.

She is not alone among big names to be humbled by public indifference,
according to sales of hardback memoirs recorded by Bookscan. Jerry Hall’s My
Life in Pictures, published in October, has sold a miserable 1,300 copies,
despite huge publicity. At least Quadrille, the publisher, did not pay her a
fortune. Three years ago Hall was given a £500,000 advance by HarperCollins
for a hoped-for kiss-and-tell memoir. The project collapsed and she returned
the